Recruitment & Marketing

Institute Sees 14% Gain in Applications with Cloud-Based CRM

• By Dian Schaffhauser
• 06/01/15

An organization that facilitates study abroad opportunities for college students has gone public with results of the use of constituent relationship management software in its operations. The Institute for Study Abroad (IFSA), which operates out of Butler University in Indianapolis, adopted software from Enrollment Rx to market and manage contacts with prospects. In the last year, the institute has seen applications increase by 14 percent.

Enrollment Rx, which comes from a company of the same name, is built on Salesforce.com and runs on the cloud. The primary focus of the program is to digitize applicant information and streamline the management of communication with those contacts.

IFSA runs 100 programs around the world where North American undergraduates can earn academic credit through their study abroad experience. The program sought a way to improve its processes for capturing and tracking student inquiries. In fall 2012 the institute implemented the new software.

"Enrollment processes are constantly evolving, and Enrollment Rx has proven to be a strong partner to support our growth and changing needs," said Steven Seaworth, vice president of university relations at IFSA-Butler. "Thanks to Enrollment Rx, we were able to cost-effectively increase communication with prospective students and enhance our entire marketing strategy without overhauling our existing systems. Best of all, Enrollment Rx has helped us to boost the number of applicants to our programs, a big win amidst the current market reality of declining applicants."

In the future, the institute may integrate the system with online registries, search engines and social media for generating and capturing leads. In addition, it's working with the vendor to develop an applicant and college advisor portal.

Customers of Enrollment Rx have included Michigan State University's Graduate School of Management, Babson College's Graduate School of Business, and World Learning, which also runs an exchange program.